


Life in Autopsy

by Poppelganger



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, F/M, Horror, Slow Build, bloodlines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:33:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poppelganger/pseuds/Poppelganger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nurse at the Santa Monica hospital sees something she shouldn't.  Whether or not she lives to tell the tale is dependent on how well she can keep her mouth shut.<br/>A Vampire: the Masquerade-Bloodlines story from the perspective of what's at the bottom of the food chain: a human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land

It's common knowledge that something is wrong with Santa Monica.  Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful city.  When the sun sets on the horizon, half-dipped in the ocean and dying it shades of red and orange, it's a sight to behold.  I spent a lot of my childhood summers on the pier with a funnel cake in one hand and the other resting on the splintered railing overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  To live and work in Santa Monica was my dream life, and that's probably why I refused to see it's flaws at first.

In the University of SoCal's College of Medicine, upperclassmen are quick to tell newcomers to stay the hell away from the Santa Monica hospital.  The facility itself isn't the problem, they say, it's the city that you have to watch out for.  Of course, these were mostly the same people who'd torn out pages from textbooks on reserve at the library and set whoever was on top of the curve's car on fire back in pre-med, and a bit of that rivalry made me too stubborn to listen.

When I started at Santa Monica, a certain Dr. Nina Hernandez--whom I admired as my hero since my career as an undergrad--took me under her wing amidst whispers of the newbie inevitably screwing things up, because, let's face it, newbies at Santa Monica Hospital were bound to screw something up.  Nature of the beast, what with all the half-dead and dying and dead-on-arrivals we got.  Those who were fresh out of med school usually transferred to San Diego and the queen bees at the nurse's station would buzz about how the little darlings couldn't take the heat in the kitchen.

I'm not giving them enough credit, though.  There are some really great men and women working around the clock at Santa Monica, taking care of gunshot wounds and toxic shock like it's their Sunday brunch.  I guess I liked to think I was all that, a tough cookie or something special, because that was what you did.  Nobody wants to admit they're soft in a program that turns bright minds against each other.  The kids who have to look at the ceiling while they're drawing blood and the ones who pretend to be taking notes during a slideshow of rare side effects and the aftermath of parasties winding up in places they don't belong pretend they're just as tough as the rest of us, because you get eaten alive if you prove otherwise.

From a nurse's perspective, there is something wrong in a city with such high rates of gang violence, disappearances, mysterious suicides, mangled or bloodless corpses, and the fact that nobody talks about any of these things.  The gang violence, as bad as it is, is somewhere at the bottom of my Things Wrong With Santa Monica list, which may seem cold, so let me illustrate with a personal story.

James Morrison was brought into ER with a gunshot wound in his face, and it became clear to me within moments of him entering the panicked room that he wasn't long for this world.  I didn't like how aware he was--not doped up on heroin like they usually were, but perfectly awake and lucid, understanding of the fact that there had been a bullet lodged in his face, that it had hurt to get it removed and that he didn't have long to live.  My job was to keep him comfortable and conscious while someone else tried to stop the bleeding and the girls at the nurse's station tried to contact his family.

Before James, I had never seen someone die before.  Let me clarify; I'd seen people die before, but it was usually the elderly or people at the end of their terminal diagnosis who were tired of living their lives in a bed with a tube in their throat.  James wasn't much older than me.  He wore the dominant gang's colors and carried a bloodided knife, a driver's license, and a pack of cigarettes in his pocket.  He was probably pretty handsome once upon a time, before the fight that had broken his nose, gotten him shot, and sent him here.

"Hey," he said, tugging at my sleeve and wincing, "Hey, what's your name?"

"I'm Anna," I told him, "Someone's calling your family right now.  Do you want something to help with the pain?"

"No one's coming for me."  He gave me a sad smile full of holes and broken teeth.  "No one.  They'll be glad I'm gone."

"Just hold on," I said, "Someone will come."  I admit, this was my idealist phase.  It was very short-lived.

"You don't know."  His white-knuckle grip on the sheets loosened a bit.  "Anna, could you do something for me?  Could I have magazine or something?"  I glanced up at Jodi, the go-to nurse on our floor who was changing one dark red bandage for a clean one, and she nodded.  

"I'll be right back," I told him.  "Stay awake so you can read it, okay?"

"Gotcha.  Thanks," he said as I speed-walked out of the room, making a beeline for the nurse's station.  I tried to calm down--my mind was reeling and nobody had anything to offer but Cosmopolitan and Oprah-when someone announced "Code Blue" over the loudspeaker.  I took the first magazine I saw on one of the desks and ran back into the operating room, but the heart monitor had already flat lined.  They tried an injection, tried a defibrillator, but nothing could get his hard started again.  He looked so peaceful.

"He never wanted a magazine," Jodi said softly, "He said you looked new, and he didn't want you to see him die."

* * *

Dr. Hernandez pulled me into the break room for a mandatory cup of coffee after James was pronounced dead and I stared into the murky liquid in my Styrofoam cup for a solid minute.  "How've you been adjusting?" she said first, and I shrugged.  Other than the time we got in a hippy kid who was too drugged up to notice the claw marks gouged into his chest, I'd been doing pretty good up until James.

"Okay."

"I know the nurses don't like to admit when they're upset about something, but you can't keep that sort of thing inside."  Dr. Hernandez has a really piercing gaze that I think works in her favor as a physician.  You feel like you can't hide anything from her.  "So if you ever feel that way, I want you to be honest.  Don't pretend that nothing happened or that you're fine, because being brave isn't going to make you feel better at the end of the day.  You'll burn out if you do that."

"He said I looked new," I said.  "Jodi told me that James had said he didn't want me to see him die."

"They're good kids," Dr. Hernandez said, "They're just young and stupid.  They should be working nine to fives or studying, or hanging out with friends instead of shooting up whoever and whatever's in reach.  Underneath all that, though, they're good kids."

"I know."  I pretended to have an eyelash in my eye turned away to blink furiously.  "I think I'm good now.  Thanks."

"Are you sure?" she said, and I took a sip of coffee.

"Yeah, I'm sure.  I'm done for the day anyway.  I'll remember what you said."

"Anna," she said sternly, but ended up shaking her head.  "Okay.  Go on."

I didn't want her to see me cry, so I wiped my face, took a deep breath, and left the break room.  The ER was quiet now that all of the worst cases were either in ICU or dead, and I felt like I needed to thank James for thinking of me.  I'm not incredibly superstitious, but I believe in always telling people when you're grateful, even if those people aren't around anymore, so I steeled myself to go back into his room on my own.

The second the dim light from the hallway hit the bed, I saw that I was not alone.  My first thought was that this person must be a relative, someone that James was sure wouldn't come for him, and I wanted to comfort them.  But I also saw that they were going through his belongings carefully, like they were searching for something.  "Excuse me," I said, taking a step closer, and they finally noticed me.

The person standing over James had rough, corpse-grey skin and pointed ears.  They were hairless, hunched over, their spine very pronounced on their back, and their eyes were glinting yellow in the dark like an animal's.  I lost whatever train of thought I'd had up until that point, overridden by fear, took a step back and started screaming.  I didn't say anything in particular, just sounds, just terror.  The thing scrambled back, leaving James and I by opening the window and leaping out.

I'm told that Jodi found me on the floor gibbering nonsense and that they were sure I'd had a panic attack.  "There's nobody here," she said softly, like I was a frightened child, when I tried to explain to her what I saw.  "I'll ask security to have a look at the footage tonight, if that'll make you feel better."

It didn't, because they hadn't recorded anything.  I hadn't come far enough into the room to be seen, and nothing else showed up.  Not the monster entering, or searching James' possessions, or even the window opening.  I was sure that someone had tampered with them.  "That has to be what happened," I said, "I know that sounds crazy, but I wouldn't make this up."  I turned to Dr. Hernandez.  "Dr. Hernandez, I know what I saw!"  She could only watch helplessly while the other nurses pushed me towards the door and told me to go home and get some rest.

So, on the list of Things Wrong With Santa Monica, grave-robbing ghost monsters rate slightly higher than gang violence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have limited exposure to (old) World of Darkness but a basic understanding of how it works, so a few improbable things may happen. Please let me know if I get anything really wrong.


	2. Occam's Razor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't promise a regular update schedule on this one like my other stories, but I'll try not to go months without a word.
> 
> A big, BIG thank you and chapter dedication to hauntedpoem, who is single-handedly responsible for reviving this story!

The unspoken order for me to stay home the next day gave me plenty of time to reflect on the monster I’d seen the previous night.  It only took me a couple hours sitting at my kitchen table and thinking about the probability of losing my job to convince myself that I had just been overworked.  I remembered the way the other nurses and Dr. Hernandez had looked at me, and I knew what they were thinking—it was stress.  A young patient died on me, after all.

Of course I didn’t actually believe what I was telling myself, but I was ready to say just about anything to the office manager to keep my job.  I still wasn’t sure what I had seen, but I could worry about it after I was certain I was still employed.

I got a call from Dr. Hernandez after lunch and spent the first two rings staring at the phone like it was a poisonous snake before answering.  “I’m fired, aren’t I?”

“You’re not fired.”  The hesitation in her voice told me not to get excited.  “Management moved you down to the blood bank for the graveyard shift.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised.  The Santa Monica blood bank was located in the basement just a hop-skip away from the morgue, the freezers, and the hospital laundry room.  People who worked down there hardly ever saw the rest of us, much less the light of the day.  The turnover rate was also really odd—the lab technician and mortician were permanent fixtures, but other nurses came and went frequently.  I’d heard rumors about people getting rotated down there before, but I hadn’t taken them seriously.

“Anna,” Dr. Hernandez said, “It’s not a death sentence.”

“I know.”  I really was relieved I hadn’t lost my job, but I wished I could still work with patients.  If I’d wanted to work around dead people all day, I would’ve gone into mortuary science, or tax law.

“You’ll be back above ground in no time.  This is only temporary.”

In hindsight, it was around this time that all promises made to reassure me either had nothing backing them or were followed immediately by disaster.

“When do I start?”

“Eight tonight,” she said, “Just for orientation and those sorts of things.”

“Right.”  I took a deep breath.  “I’ll probably see you in a few weeks.”

“Of course,” she said, and the line went dead.

*

There were two guys who worked the graveyard shift down in the basement, a lab technician and a mortician.  The mortician, Phil, was a nice guy, if a little socially awkward, but morticians were a different breed of cat as far back as pre-med.  While the rest of us were trying to figure out how to stop the patient’s innards from liquefying, they were idly wondering what that might look like. 

The lab technician was another story.  The name “Vandal Cleaver” was whispered around the break room table synonymous with “that weird fucker in the blood bank,” and he apparently had quite a reputation for being generally unpleasant.  Dr. Malcolm claimed he’d gone down there during Vandal’s shift to confront him about a sexual harassment claim made by a female nurse working the same shift, and Vandal responded to this by telling him that he “wouldn’t touch the ugly bitch with a remote surgery unit.”

That said, the same nurse has since tried to pull the same trick on several other coworkers and even the office manager, and no longer works in Santa Monica.

Some people claimed he sold drugs on the side, or that he only had the job thanks to being the hospital director’s nephew or lover, or both, depending on who told the story.  I saw him about as often as I saw Phil, which was about as often as the planets aligned, so I’d never talked to him before, and I tried not to worry about quietly disappearing into the night or sexual harassment or whatever else he was supposed to be doing to people.

I left home a little early, before sunset, to give myself plenty of time, pulling into the parking ramp and sticking close to the streetlamps.  Not paranoid or anything.

After business hours, the door to the blood bank locks and employees take the hospital stairs to get in.  I noticed on my way down that the staircase reminded me of one I’d seen in a horror movie a week earlier.  Hospital decorators make things look ascetic at best and creepy at worst, but it looked like they’d seen the last flight of stairs to the basement, said “fuck this,” and never looked back.

Unsurprisingly, the blood bank had a different feeling from the rest of the hospital; whereas the upper levels had a certain charm to their underfunded Russian orphanage-level cleanliness and décor, the basement had a definite somber, murder-hotel vibe.  I paused at the window and met the gaze of a redhead who looked like he’d either had way too much coffee or not nearly enough.

“I’m Anna Rourke.”

“I know,” he said, in about the same tone as an aggravated dog trainer at the end of a long day.  I would come to understand that this was his default tone of voice.  “Come on around.”

He unlocked the door for me and led me to an office where boxes and piles of paper were stacked nearly to the ceiling.  After disappearing into the white collar jungle, he emerged with a key to the blood bank door.  “Don’t lose it,” he said, handing it to me.  I followed him back to the blood bank window and sat at the unoccupied desk.  “So,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “What’re you here for?”

“Excuse me?”

“What are you here for?” he repeated, enunciating each word like I might not catch them otherwise. 

“I have a temporary change in shift,” I told him, and he threw his head back and laughed.

“No, really.  What did you do?  Stole from the backroom?  Met with one the Queen Bitch’s many political enemies?  No, you don’t look the type.  You probably just saw something you weren’t supposed to.”  The shock must have been evident on my face, because he smirked and murmured, “Bingo.”

“You, too?” I asked.

“No.  It was a choice for me.” 

I waited for him to elaborate, but he never did. 

“You have a lot to learn,” he said, “But I have neither the time nor the desire to teach you, so it’ll have to wait.”  He handed me a clipboard.  “Check inventory for me,” he ordered without even looking at me.

I took it and stood from the desk, frowning.  “You’re Vandal, right?” I asked, and he raised a brow.

“Yeah.  Why?”

“No reason,” I said with my best secretary smile.  He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself, but he didn’t need to—his reputation preceded him.

I headed over to the refrigerated chamber where the blood packs were kept, only to find it was in complete disarray and resigned myself to spending half an hour reorganizing.  I was halfway through when I heard someone come in behind me and glanced over my shoulder to find the mortician.

“Hey,” he greeted simply, looking surprised, “You, uh, looking for something?”

“Phil?” I asked, and he nodded, “I’m Anna.  I was transferred down here today.”

“Oh!” he said, and then, “Ohhhh.”

“Yeah.”  I turned away from the mess.  “Did you also…see something?”

“Ah.  Not exactly.”  He shrugged uncomfortably.  “So what all do you know already?”

“About what?”

“About the Masquerade,” he whispered, like it was some big secret.  I stared blankly and he apparently took the hint.  “Oh.  Well.  It’s okay.  I guess Vandal’ll probably explain it to you.”

“Somehow, I doubt that,” I murmured and returned to organizing the room until I heard a door opening in the distance and a muffled voice I didn’t recognize.  “Isn’t the blood bank closed?”

Phil shifted his weight nervously between his legs.  “Sort of?”

I had been at my new shift for less than an hour and already had more than a dozen complaints to make about the workplace.  I turned on my heel, leaving Phil behind without another word, and went back to face Vandal.  He glanced over his shoulder when he heard the door open behind him.  “Just in time,” he said dryly, “Bring me three bags.  Doesn’t matter which three, just keep track and make a note of it.”

“Are you….”  My eyes went from him to the rough-looking guy standing on the other side of the blood bank window and back again.  “Are you selling blood?  The blood bank’s blood?  To random people?”

Vandal rolled his eyes.  “I don’t have time to argue with you about this right now.”

“Tough,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, “Because you’re going to have to make time.  What the hell is going on down here?”

Turning his back on the man waiting in the hallway, Vandal stalked towards me.  He wasn’t that much taller, and he only looked slightly more aggravated than usual, but there was something in his eyes, something that reminded me of what I’d seen the other night that made me lose my confidence.

“Go back there,” he said lowly, “And bring me three blood packs.  Right now.”

The stories I’d heard briefly returned to the front of my mind—sexual harassment claims and the abnormal turnover rate and supposed disappearances—so I meekly nodded and complied.  Phil welcomed me back with a warm smile that didn’t seem to belong down there and I just nodded in acknowledgment, mind still reeling.

Santa Monica had problems, and so did its hospital.  But something worse was going on in the blood bank, and if I was going to work there with any peace of mind, I had to find out what that something was.


	3. People Who Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obligatory explanation chapter, and then we'll be back in the action.

Santa Monica can be easily—but not neatly—divided into two groups; people who know things, and people who don’t.  Everyone likes to talk, though, and figuring out what’s worth listening to is largely dependent on one’s ability to discern truth from bullshit.  Thankfully, with a city full of loose lips, it’s inevitable that you’ll run into someone who actually knows what they’re talking about if you just ask enough people.

I came in at the end of what was once my normal shift, hoping to catch some of the other nurses.  I saw a taller woman in a lab coat sticking out in the crowd and immediately recognized Dr. Hernandez, running to catch her before she left for the night.

“Anna,” she said, sounding relieved, “How are you doing?  I heard….”  She stopped, looking reluctant to continue.

“Heard what?” I asked.

“That you were reassigned to the blood bank.”

“I was.”

Her smile fell.  “Oh.”

“Why?” I pressed, but she waved me off.

“Never mind,” she said, “It’s all rumors, you know.  Obviously, you’re fine and there’s nothing to worry about.”

Dr. Nina Hernandez, the intrepid veteran of the Santa Monica ER, was someone I’d recognized early on as a person who knew things.  When she talked, I listened, and when she didn’t talk, I tried to get her to speak up.  “What kinds of rumors?” I urged.

“Silly things,” she reassured me, “Urban legends about people who have worked down there and the kinds of things that happen.”

“Could you tell me a little more about that?”

She paused.  “Anna,” she said sternly as she met my gaze, “Is something going on down there?”

I hesitated for a long minute, trying to figure out how to answer.  On one hand, the answer was yes, something was definitely going on, and Dr. Hernandez deserved to know.  On the other hand, I didn’t know exactly what it was that was going on, and I also ran the risk of not being taken seriously again and being relocated again, or fired.

Or worse.

“No,” I said finally, with a little laugh, “It’s pretty quiet down there.  All I do is help keep track of things.  Just curious what people say, I guess.”

Dr. Hernandez laughed a little, too, nervously.  “Good,” she said, “That’s good.”  And then she lowered her voice.  “Don’t take any of this to heart, but there’s a lot of talk about the blood bank by the nurses around here.  Discrepancies in records and inventory, shady characters hanging around or coming into the building after closing, missing staff, those sorts of things.”

“Missing staff?” I repeated, trying to sound incredulous rather than terrified.

“People get rotated in and out of the blood bank frequently,” Dr. Hernandez shrugged, “It’s just how the director runs things around here.  It’s not a cause for concern, but it’s a source for a lot of office gossip, especially since some nurses moved to other hospitals without warning.”

“Really?”

“It doesn’t happen very often,” she said, “In recent memory, the only person who just packed up and left was Ava Sutton.”

“Where’d she go?” I asked conversationally, relieved when Dr. Hernandez didn’t say something like, “ _nobody knows._ ”

“Palo Alto, I believe.  She’d been having some problems with anxiety before that and just needed something a little quieter.”  Her expression softened.  “Speaking of, how have you been?”

“Good,” I lied, “Really good, actually.  I think a week or two more of my quiet, subterranean shift and I’ll be ready to come back up with the rest of you again.”

“Glad to hear it.  You take care of yourself, alright?”

“I will,” I assured her and held a smile on my face until she was gone.  I had an hour yet before my shift would start, and I went to the break room to heat up a microwavable dinner and started jotting down what I knew on a notepad. 

The blood bank at the Santa Monica hospital was an incredibly shady place.  That was more or less a fact.  The only other people who worked there besides myself were Phil the mortician and Vandal the lab technician, the latter of whom was apparently selling blood.  Dr. Hernandez may have corroborated this by mentioning the discrepancies in the records and the actual inventory, but I wondered if maybe other things were going missing, too, like equipment or medication.  I decided I’d have to look into that, too.

There was also Ava Sutton, who supposedly had trouble with anxiety—like me—and was moved to the blood bank—also like me—before mysteriously transferring to another hospital in northern California.  It was entirely possible that I was reading too much into this, but I still wrote down her name and circled it.  If anyone could shed some light on what was going on, it would probably be her.

“Coming to terms with your situation?” someone asked, and I nearly jumped out of my skin since I hadn’t heard the door open, much less anyone come in.  I had been so absorbed in my note taking that I hadn’t noticed when Vandal Cleaver had joined me in the break room, giving me the most unnerving stare he’d managed yet.  I tried not to focus on the break room door, which he’d shut behind him, because I didn’t really trust him enough to feel comfortable being alone in a room with him.

“Jesus Christ, you need to wear a bell,” I snapped, hurriedly tucking my notepad away in my bag, and started stirring the noodles on my plate with a fork.  “And if by ‘coming to terms’ you mean ‘waiting for an explanation,’ then yes, I am.”

“You want an explanation?” he asked, sounding only slightly more amused than he was aggravated, “Normally, I wouldn’t bother, but I would like to avoid any scenes like the one you made the other night.  It’s simple, really; somebody’s doing a really poor job of upholding the Masquerade.”

My hand stilled, pasta wrapped around a plastic fork halfway to my mouth as I tried to understand.  “Masquerade,” I repeated heatedly, “And what the hell does that mean?  Because a masked ball does not sound like the reason I almost lost my job.”

I would come to call this particular expression of Vandal’s the “I need to go home or I’m going to shove this bitch in the freezer” look.  “Your own carelessness is what made you almost lose your job,” he corrected, but before I could argue, he continued, “The Masquerade, on the other hand, is something that is going to become fundamental to your very existence from tonight onward.  I am going to explain this once, and you are going to listen, and if you do something stupid after this, it’s on you.”

I knew by now that talking back would get me nowhere, and Vandal was unfortunately a person who seemed to know things, so I rolled my eyes and waited for him to continue.

“The Masquerade,” he said carefully, “Is the concept that keeps the world of night invisible to the average person.  When you woke up to go to work yesterday, you had no idea that monsters existed, did you?”

“No.”

“And you’re a modern, highly-educated and specially trained young woman.  But maybe I’m giving you too much credit.”

“I heard that last part.”

“You were meant to.”  He shrugged.  “Of course, there’s more to it than that, but all you really need to know is that your new job, above whatever work you do in the blood bank, is keeping secrets.  The most basic of these secrets is that we sell blood to vampires.”

I paused.  “Vampires,” I echoed incredulously.  He didn’t repeat himself.  As much as I wanted to argue, I could think of more farfetched explanations than that for what I’d seen.  “And we do this why?”

“Because it’s an extremely lucrative business, and Queen Bitch is all about business.”

“Who is that?” I asked, “You mentioned her the other day, too.”

Vandal was very slow to answer.  “All you need to know is that she’s your boss,” he said grudgingly, refusing to elaborate. 

“Well, there’s obviously a lot I don’t know,” I said, “So correct me if I’m wrong in assuming this, but if there really are vampires, then shouldn’t we not be keeping this a secret?  I mean, shouldn’t we tell the other staff, or the police, or something?  How can this seriously be a secret still?  What’s stopping us from telling somebody?”

“Common sense, for one,” he said, and I frowned.  “Consider the following; a fresh, young nurse at Santa Monica sees a monster break into a patient’s room, steal something and jump out a window without setting off any alarms or showing up on security cameras.”

“Do vampires even show up on security cameras?”

“Irrelevant,” he snapped, “Now, consider this; an anxiety-ridden, newbie nurse at Santa Monica at Santa Monica sees someone die for the first time and cracks under the pressure.  She has a mental breakdown and imagines a monster to cope with the trauma.  Tell me which of those two stories would make more sense to most people.”

I said nothing for a minute.  “Okay,” I sighed, “I know nobody would believe me.  I already realized that.  So why don’t you tell someone, and Phil?  He knows, too, right?”

“Of course he does,” Vandal said like it was supposed to be obvious, “And we don’t tell anyone because there’s something in it for us if we keep our mouths shut.”

“Like what?”

His lips twisted into a wicked grin.  “For me, it’s something you can’t even imagine,” he said, “And for you and Phil, it’s that you get to live to see tomorrow.  Argue with me all you want, but I am supposed to report you if you become too problematic.”

I stared wordlessly at him, and slowly, my annoyance for Vandal Cleaver turned into fear.  He was in this a lot deeper than I was, but had apparently made connections with the right people.  The risks were too great for me to push him and see if he was telling the truth.

“Are you even going to eat that?” he asked, looking pointedly at my dinner. 

I wasn’t really feeling hungry anymore and pushed it towards him.  “No.  You can have it if you want.”

He looked at me like I’d shoved a pile of trash in his face.  “Thanks,” he said dryly, “I’ll pass.  I didn’t come up here to make small talk; I’m just making sure you don’t tell anyone.”

I didn’t have to ask to guess what might be the consequences of that—for me, and for the person I told.  I was suddenly thankful that I had lied to Dr. Hernandez. 

“Well, great job, nobody even came in to the break room,” I told him as I stood to dump the microwavable tray into the trash.

“Of course they didn’t,” he said, “Most of the hospital staff is afraid of me.”

I turned to look at him and took a moment to really size up my new coworker, the scowl and glare that was seemingly stuck on his face and the strange look in his eye that made him seem unpredictable.  “You don’t say?” I scoffed, “Wonder why.”


	4. A Reflection in a Cracked Mirror

When I came into work Saturday night, Phil had both hands in the torn-open upper half of a cadaver in the morgue.  I did a double-take and paused mid-stride, poking my head through the door.  “Hey,” I said, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the slab.  I’d seen the aftermath of car wrecks before, but the carnage left by interstate collisions wasn’t quite so deliberate.  The corpse’s torso was a mess of slashes, exposing bone and crushed organs.  There were rope burns on his wrists.

“Oh, hey, Anna!” Phil greeted with much more enthusiasm that anyone in a room with a corpse ever should.  “Good to see you.  It’s been quiet tonight; Vandal hasn’t come out of the blood bank in a little while.  I think he’s on the phone.”

“Ah.”  He must have finally noticed that I hadn’t looked at him even once since walking into the room, and he looked down at the corpse like he just noticed it was there.

“This guy came in just tonight,” he said quietly, “Someone found him hanging from a street lamp on the pier.  No one’s identified him yet, but hey, at least he’s still got a face.  That should speed up the process.”  He laughed and jabbed me in the side with his elbow.  I couldn’t quite make myself laugh, so he cleared his throat.  “Well.  Sometimes they don’t, so, uh, this is good.”

I excused myself as politely as I could and went to find Vandal.  The door was unlocked, and I helped it shut silently behind me when I saw him leaning over his desk, phone in one hand.

“Of course,” he said, “No, no.  You’re right.  Absolutely.  I’ll do my best to see your goals become reality.”

I took my seat next to him at the desk, picking up the clipboard to read over the notes he’d made.  According to the numbers, he’d made a few “sales” tonight, as well.

Vandal’s gaze slid to me slowly.  In contrast with his almost pleasant tone of voice, his expression was that of someone in severe pain.  “Apologies, I was distracted,” he said, and I raised a brow.  I didn’t think he was capable of talking like that.  “No.  She just came in.”  He paused for a long time, and something like surprise flashed across his face.  “Yes.  Yes, I’ll tell her right away.  Of course.  Thank you.”

He practically slammed the phone down to hang up and looked at the computer in front of him.  I waited for an explanation that I suspected would never come, but he surprised me when he suddenly said, “The director wants to see you in a week.”  The tone wasn’t annoyed or angry and not quite fearful, but maybe a little nervous and solemn in a “I want you to understand this is serious” way. 

“The director?” I repeated.  The anxiety I’d managed to bite back before returned with full force.  “What for?”

“Probably just to make sure you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said honestly, and pressed a button to turn on the monitor.  “It is surprising, though.  Queen Bitch doesn’t usually have people talk to her one-on-one.  I’m one of the only people she does that with, and my situation is…a little different than yours.”

“Is there something I should know about the director?”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.  “Not so long ago, she more or less owned Santa Monica.  Has a hand in just about every big business.  Also our boss, and the one who checks our meticulous record-keeping for the blood bank.  You really haven’t figured it out yet?”

I hadn’t really wanted to think about it.  “She’s a vampire?” I whispered.

I thought he might laugh at me, but he managed to hold it in as a bitter smile.  “Look at you, getting a bit quicker.”

“And she wants to see me?” I squeaked, “What’s going to happen to me?” 

He looked at me, expression thoughtful.  “She’ll probably threaten you,” he said, “Tell you she’ll have all of your loved ones eviscerated and hung up on the pier, like the poor bastard we got in earlier, if you so much as breathe about what you saw.”

“What do I possibly have to gain by telling anyone?  Why do you think I’m here?”

He raised his hands and scoffed.  “Preaching to the choir, sweetheart.  She knows that, too, obviously; she put you down here.  Threats are what she does best, but don’t think she can’t carry them out.  If you want my advice, just nod and swear you’ll be good.”

I stared down at my hands and let out a sigh.  “Vandal,” I said after a quiet moment, and he let out a “hm,” in response, having returned his attention to the computer monitor.  “Honestly, do you think I’m going to die?  Because you should just tell me now and spare me a week of worrying.  And give me time to write up my will.  I don’t exactly have any next of kin, so.  Um.  I guess, I could leave you and Phil my stuff?  You probably won’t even want it, but there’s no one else I’d leave it to.”

I looked up when he didn’t respond and saw something strange in his eyes that I hadn’t ever seen before.  It almost looked like pity with just a hint of amusement, but I could have been imagining things.  “Don’t do anything stupid, and you won’t die,” he said with finality, “And I don’t want any of your shit.”

“Well, you can just, I dunno, donate it or something.  Or give your half to Phil.”

“Like hell,” he muttered.

Someone approached the blood bank window and he turned to them.  While it was no less surreal to know we were selling blood to vampires who came through, the process had become a bit more automatic.  Vandal handled customers with the finesse of a short-tempered retail clerk on Black Friday, I handed him the blood packs, and we kept track of what types we were selling.

I didn’t doubt it went beyond illegal, but I had overcome most of my hang-ups regarding legality in the last couple of days.  Funny what people do for their jobs.

“So, Vandal,” I said once our customer was gone, “Any more secrets you can let me in on?”

“There’s a lot you can get in on just by paying attention,” he said unhelpfully.

Apparently, he’d recovered from the phone call and was back to his usual, asshole self.  “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

“For real, though.”

He rolled his eyes.  “I have said before that I have neither the time nor the desire to teach you about the Masquerade.”

“I was hoping you’d changed your mind,” I said.

He turned in his chair, giving me his full attention.  “You want to talk?  Okay.  Let’s talk.”  I suddenly regretted asking.  “Anna, what we do is very important.  Do you know why?”  I shook my head.  “Take a guess,” he hissed.

“Um.  We’re upholding the, uh, Masquerade?”

“Yes,” he nodded, “But there’s another reason.”  He paused, closing his eyes.  “Blood,” he sighs, the way some people sigh when they talk about someone they’re hopelessly in love with.  “That is why what we do is important, because of the blood.  What do you know about blood, Anna?”

I shifted away from him in my chair, wondering if it would make too much noise if I tried to scoot back a few inches.  Or a foot.  “Like, what I learned in med school?”

“No,” he said, glaring, “Not what you learned in med school, but what you know instinctively.”  I wasn’t sure how to answer, but he let it go.  “There’s something primal about the color red.  It’s almost universally one of the first colors to be given a word in human languages.  Red like flowers.  Red like blood.  Red like human tissue, muscles, and viscera.  How strange is it that a simple liquid means the difference between life and death for us?  We’re so fragile, just a skeleton wrapped in meat, and there’s blood inside that keeps us moving, breathing, and living.”  His eyes were distant when he talked, not really looking at me anymore but at something that wasn’t really there, maybe a person he’d known once or a place he’d been before. 

I knew I would have to work with him for a while longer and didn’t really want to hear any stories about his childhood or animal cruelty or whatever uncomfortable topic this conversation was headed towards, so I excused myself.

Phil was pulling the loose entrails from the corpse and sliding them into a bucket at the end of the table.  He heard the door open and greeted me with a smile and another, “Hey!” not noticing the blood all over the front of his scrubs.  I still felt more comfortable with him than with Vandal, and returned the smile, taking a seat on the chest where the corpse’s personal effects were.

“How’s it going?” he asked conversationally.

“Oh.  You know.”  I shrugged.  “Does Vandal hate everyone?”

“Does he?”  He made it sound like it was news. 

“Never mind.” 

There was a short pause before he said, very quietly, “I had a buddy from med school, a pharmacist, who suddenly started drinking real heavy a few years ago.”  I looked at him and saw he’d stopped working, now staring down at the viscous, clear embalming liquid coating his latex gloves.  “Not like just a glass a night, but worse.  A lot worse.  He didn’t like talking about it, just said he looked at the world differently.  Didn’t find out till a few months later what he was talking about.”

“He saw something?” I guessed.

“Yeah,” Phil said, “Dunno what exactly, but I guess he was kind of like us.  Wrong place at the wrong time, and now he’s gotta pay for it.”

I nodded.  “I saw one of them,” I said, “In a patient’s room.  The guy had just died, and this thing was in there, trying to find something, I guess.  Didn’t even look human anymore, just like a monster.”

“Oh, them.”  He nodded.  “Yeah, we see them down here now and then.  I don’t really know as much about it as Vandal does, but he’s different.  Got special privileges and all.”

“Special privileges?”

“Yeah, he’s….”  He paused.  “Uh, maybe I shouldn’t say.”

I was disappointed at being left out, but dealing with Phil was a million times more bearable than dealing with Vandal, so I just nodded.  “What about you?  How’d you get roped into all this?”

He laughed a little.  “It was pretty weird,” he said, “I was working downtown, actually.  We got a gal in that was sheet-white.  I don’t mean like regular pale, but this corpse had never even heard of livor mortis, you know what I mean?  Got her on the table and I found out wasn’t a drop of blood in her.” 

He took a deep breath.  “I wasn’t the kind of person who thought too hard about the bodies that came in.  LA’s a twisted place, things happen.  I thought about this, though, because how could I not?  Two bite marks in the neck, corpse completely drained—hard not to be a little superstitious.  Someone came in that same night, while I was doing the autopsy, actually, and warned me not to say anything to anyone about the corpse.  Even had me change my autopsy notes.  Next thing I know, I’m getting transferred to Santa Monica.”

“That sucks,” I said. 

He shrugged.  “It could be worse.  They may seem like monsters, but they could’ve just killed us and spared themselves the trouble, you know?  Even Ava….”

He stopped again, but I didn’t want to let this one go.  “What about her?” I asked.

Phil hesitated to answer.  “Did you know her?”

“Yeah, Ava Sutton,” I lied, “What about her?”

“She got in a series of unlucky circumstances,” he said, “Ended up making a mistake and getting in trouble.  They sent her north, though, hospital in Palo Alto.”

“Oh.”  I’d hoped to hear a little more than that, but at least I knew a few more new things; that Ava had seen something she shouldn’t have—maybe on more than one occasion—and that she’d been relocated, definitely to Palo Alto.  We sat in silence for a minute before Phil went over to the sink in the corner of the room, stripping the gloves and tossing them into the bin before washing his hands.  “Hey, Phil,” I called, “How long do you think I’ll be here?”

He glanced over his shoulder, seemingly surprised by the question.  “What do you mean?”

“How long, do you think?” I repeated, “Until I get to go back to my old shift?”

He didn’t answer, staring back at me with confusion that slowly gave way to sympathy.  His eyes told me everything I needed to know—I wouldn’t be going back.  “Ah.  Never mind.”

I reluctantly returned to the blood bank after this, glad to find that Vandal was content to ignore me unless he needed me to get him something.  At the end of my shift, I dragged myself away from the desk and started heading for the door.  I was just stepping out into the hallway when I thought I heard something.

Specifically, a voice.

It was soft and miserable, too indistinct for me to make out any words.  It went on for a minute or two before fading into silence.  I desperately wanted to chalk it up to being tired and stressed, and resolved not to say a word about it to Phil, Vandal or the director in the interest of seeming mentally stable.  But as I hurried up the stairs and through the parking lot to my car, I remembered Vandal’s words, his advice that the more I paid attention, the more I would learn.

People say that we fear the dark because we don’t know what’s there, but to me, knowing that monsters were real made it seem a lot scarier than before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Classes resume next week, so updates might become a little slow again.


	5. Two Steps Closer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the absence! There was, of course, a test waiting for me on my first Friday back. Usually I'll give a warning ahead of time if there won't be an update, but this one caught me by surprise.
> 
> Also, sorry for the slow build, but it's necessary for the story. I promise things will start moving quickly and we'll see things other than the hospital eventually.

Trauma center personnel can only hear so many “code blue” tones over the loudspeaker before they become conditioned to act without even thinking, dropping everything to perform their function as a cog in the hospital machine.  It’s easy to react kind of like an animal startled by a loud noise at first, but a person gets used to it over time.  Eventually you override anxiety with intuition; you don’t find your hands shaking when you sit down in the breakroom after a patient stabilizes anymore.

So when I came in through the back door, not quite halfway down the blood bank staircase, and the hospital’s automated alert system called a code, I turned right back around.

The first person I ran into was Jodi, who practically ran me over in a hurry to get somewhere.  “Christ, Anna,” she exclaimed, “Sorry.  Wasn’t expecting to see you.”

“It’s okay,” I told her, “Can I help?”

“No, it’s alright.  Dr. Malcolm’s in with one of the new arrivals now—we’ve got a guy with a gunshot wound in the head and a gal coughing up a lot of blood, internal wounds—and I’m going to try to call in Dr. Hernandez.”  She pressed her hand to her forehead, taking a deep breath.  “I’d really like it if you could get moved back here with the rest of us, though.  We’re really hurting for extra hands up here.”

I forced a smile.  “I’ll do what I can.”

“Oh, don’t listen to me,” she said, and patted my shoulder as she began walking again, “Don’t burn yourself out.  We’ll talk later.”  She looked exhausted, and it sounded like only the beginning of a very long night.  I felt the sort of longing a person gets when they’ve been out of town for weeks, something like homesickness for the ER, which isn’t something I ever thought I would feel.  With incredible reluctance, I turned back to the blood bank stairs and ignored the electronic voice droning, “CODE BLUE,” for the first time in my life.

*

I was already in a bad mood when I jammed my key in the blood bank door, stomped past Phil who got halfway through a greeting before realizing I was in no mood to talk, and threw myself down at my work station, glaring at the computer monitor.  Vandal glanced over his shoulder from the transaction window, and I hoped he would do the both of us a favor and not makesome sort of smartass remark.

“Get lost on your way here?” he deadpanned.

Of course, I was never so lucky.

“No,” I said simply, showing some impressive self-restraint.

Apparently, he didn’t want to hear my bitching any more than I wanted to deal with his commentary, because he just shrugged.  “Go back and grab me a few bags.  We’re cleaned out up here.”

Eager to have something to keep me busy, I stood from the desk and navigated the basement hallways back to the blood bank storage.  The boxes weren’t in quite as much of a disorganized mess as my first day working, and I was hopeful it would stay that way.  As I sifted through them, filling my arms with blood bags, I heard something.

“No,” there was a miserable whisper, “Please, I…I’m sorry…I wanna go home.” 

I glanced around the room very slowly.  It was louder than usual, clear enough that I could make out some of the words.  My anxiety mounted as I realized that nobody but Phil and Vandal should have been down there with me, and I didn’t recognize the voice.  I hadn’t hallucinated the monster that got me down here, and I wasn’t going to talk myself into thinking I was so stressed I was hearing voices, which could only mean….

“Please, I’m so…hungry….Just, just give me a taste, please.”

Someone else was really there. 

I didn’t know where exactly, just that they were somewhere in the blood bank, and I was closer now than I had been before.  Backing away towards the hallway again, I accidentally bumped into a box and it scraped across the floor.  The whispers fell silent all at once.  And then they turned into growls.

“Are you out there?  You’re coming back for more?  This isn’t fair, I-I’ve given you so much, you owe me.  You, you owe me something, a-anything, just a drop, _goddamn you, don’t you leave me here_!!”

“Anna?”  I whirled around, meeting Phil’s worried face.  “Are you alright?”

A silence followed, and the voice stopped.  I waited a moment to see if it would continue, but it never did.  “Yeah.  Sorry.  Distracted, that’s all.”  I followed him back out into the hallway and took a deep breath as we reached the morgue, lingering in the doorway when he went back to the corpse waiting for him on the table.  “Phil,” I said, “Is there something you and Vandal want to tell me?”

He looked up at me almost timidly.  “About?”

“Contrary to popular belief, I won’t fly off the handle at every little thing,” I said, “I would just really appreciate knowing if there’s, maybe, someone living inside the walls of the blood bank or something?  Just tell me I’m not out of my mind.”

He regarded me very carefully.  “You’re not out of your mind,” he told me, “And we were going to tell you eventually.  You won’t have to deal with her, though, because that’s really Vandal’s job.”

“Her?” I repeated.  Phil looked reluctant to continue, but I didn’t want to let this one go.  “Look, I….”

Distantly, the tone for a code blue sounded above us, and then an announcement over the loudspeaker “CODE YELLOW.”  Yellow, a missing patient alert.  Thinking back on the patients Jodi had told me about, something automatically didn’t make sense.  I left Phil in the morgue and rushed back to my work space. 

“Vandal, call the director,” I said, already reaching for the phone myself.

“What?”  He stood from his chair and looked out the bulletproof glass window, but no one was out there.  “What the hell is going on?”

“One of the ER patients is missing.  One of them was shot in the head, and the other has serious internal bleeding; I doubt either of them would have walked out on their own.”  I held the phone to my ear with my shoulder, but Vandal grabbed my wrist before I could dial.  “What?”

“Leave it.  People go missing all the time.”  One of my eyebrows rose but his grip tightened on my wrist hard enough to leave a bruise and I winced, relinquishing the phone when he held out his free hand for it.

“People go missing all the time,” I echoed, “I won’t even get started on what’s wrong with that, but that doesn’t mean we can just ignore a Code Yellow.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?”  He shook his head and let go of my wrist, watching as I held it to my chest and rubbed the red ring that had appeared on my skin, glaring at him with all the contempt I could muster.  “Kind of incredible, really.  I thought that after almost losing your job and getting transferred to the basement for the graveyard shift thanks to the benevolence of Queen Bitch herself, you’d know better than to stick your nose in that sort of thing.”

“Stick my nose in….”  I huffed and held my hand to the side of my face in the same frustrated gesture that I assumed Vandal had became acquainted with through how frequently he must have seen it now.  I took a moment to regain my composure.  “You know more about this, don’t you?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, anything!  About the missing patient, or that thing I saw in Morrison’s room, or whatever the hell is living down here with us begging to be let out!”  He looked surprised at the last item on the list.  “Don’t tell me I’m imagining things, I know better than that.”

“I won’t tell you that,” he said, “But I could tell the director that you’re still having hallucinations and that it would be in her best interest to let you go.”

I froze.  “You wouldn’t.”

Vandal narrowed his eyes.  “I would, if that’s what it took.  You’re either stupid or ungrateful.”

“Almost getting fired and helping you cover up a patient’s disappearance?  Why wouldn’t I appreciate that?”

“I’m trying to help you!”  His fists shook at his sides as he tried to regain control of his temper.  I didn’t realize I’d takena step back from him until he took one as well.  “Not ungrateful, it seems.  But you won’t live long if you don’t get smarter.  Think for a minute, Anna; if you snoop around in search of answers, what do you think will happen to you?”

“What are you saying?  What the hell is goingon here, Vandal?  You talk about monsters or vampires or whatever that we sell blood to, but there’s more than that, right?”

He took a step closer suddenly and I flinched when he leaned in, his nose almost touching mine.  “What will happen to you?” he asked firmly, and I choked back a whimper.

“I’ll…end up like Ava.”  He nodded, satisfied with my answer, and leaned back, going to sit down behind the window.  I fell back into my own chair beside the cabinet, holding my face in my hands.  “She’s dead, isn’t she?  She’s not really in Palo Alto or whatever?”  He didn’t answer.  I didn't really want to know, anyway.  “Vandal, I just want to do my job.  I want to help people.  I don’t want to die.”

“Nobody does.”  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.  “You know what keeps you alive?”  I shook my head and he gave a crooked smile.  “Knowing when to keep your mouth shut.” 


End file.
